Mixing an ALBUM

[outbreak525]

Hello folks.
Mixing an album here. The problem I am struggling with is the songs as of right now sound quite different from each other. Sure I've used the same guitar tones and all the drums are programmed but each song is mixed differently.
What do I do about getting them to all sound like they belong on the same album without compromising the unique distinct qualities of the mix on each song? I am not trying to open one file and directly copy the settings over to another mix. I feel that is very lazy and it probably won't come out sounding too good since each song is diverse from each other.
Any help on mixing albums as a whole would be very appreciated!
Thanks!

 

[Charles J]

in your scenario, you can either take the middle ground, copy the settings THEN adjust to the song OR, since it sounds like you've done a lot of the mixing, let the mastering stage bring everything together and make each different mix sound more like it's part of the same 'family' so to speak, which is an essential PART of what the mastering process is SUPPOSED to do... which i think kind of gets lost in the 'JUST GET IT LOUD' thing....

 

[Heabow]

^ This

 

[BLUElightCory]

in your scenario, you can either take the middle ground, copy the settings THEN adjust to the song OR, since it sounds like you've done a lot of the mixing, let the mastering stage bring everything together and make each different mix sound more like it's part of the same 'family' so to speak, which is an essential PART of what the mastering process is SUPPOSED to do... which i think kind of gets lost in the 'JUST GET IT LOUD' thing....

Yup.

...And if you go the "copy mix settings and tweak from there" route, don't think you're lazy - this is oftentimes (but not always) the workflow people use when mixing on a console: finish a song, leave everything hooked up and routed, and move on to the next song.

 

[jENK]

You should save your settings from the first song you mixed and use it as a starting point for the other songs. Each song can still have their own character. Using a professional mastering engineer will help also.

 

[Scott Horner]

I always take one song from the group that I feel best represents the overall sound of the band and mix that one to a point where it's almost finalized (minus automation). Once the band is happy with that track I save the project as a template and simply create new projects with that template, import the raw tracks and tweak accordingly. This has been the most efficient method for me. Copying and pasting settings is too time consuming in most cases.

 

[Sloan]

I have a retarded habit of loading all songs one after another in one huge project, then rendering each song as an independent wav, dragging those shits back into a separate project for volume leveling and fades/time between songs.

 

[outbreak525]

Sloan, you know, that's actually not a bad idea.
Thank you all for the solid advice gentlemen, looks like I'm not the only one with this problem!

 

[bryan_kilco]

I used to throw all the tracks into once session, that way, I know stuff will sound the same. I understand you may want to accent certain parts of a mix but that can be done with automation. For example, I'd pretty much want my kick drum to always sound the same, except for if there was some sort of jazzy break in a metal tune or something like that where extreme difference might be cool. Lately I've been just using a template.